Just think a bit about what has happened last weeks in London. Now just think in a different way as you may usually do. Let’s just call things with a different name, and ask some (really silly) questions.
There are people, who claim being in some kind of special relationship with a very powerful imaginary friend, that entitle themselves with the right of killing other people who, apparently, don’t talk to the same imaginary friend. This circumstance is a good reason to kill them, they think. I am just curious…
How can we really know we are talking about different imaginary friends? What if it is the same for everyone? How many imaginary friends do exist, one, two, forty two, one per each person alive in this world? What has happened to the imaginary friends that no one ever remembers now, the ones that were so popular some thousands of years ago? Why these imaginary friends never seem to answer our biggest questions, and seem to easily answer the most petty ones? I’ve never been able to talk to one of these imaginary friends. Has it happened to you?. If so, how that conversation went? Has your life, or better yet, the life of your loved ones, changed in a meaningful way after that conversation? More importantly, what makes you so special (on the entire universe) to be listened to by your favorite imaginary friend? Does your imaginary friend talk to other people in need too, I guess in his/her spare time? What is time and who did it, by the way?
My most educated guess is: We will never know. Because perhaps, imaginary friends end being just that… Imaginary? When I think in this silly way, a crystal (ball) clear thought comes to my mind: What a waste of human lives, along the entire human history, in the name of… nothing?
Another small gallery of pictures I’ve taken in the last year. Basically, places with trees. I am always attracted to trees, I don’t know why, I like to take pictures of them. What I’ve noticed too selecting this pictures is that they are very dark. I guess it comes with the mood of this last year. Comes to my mind too, that some day I’d like to visit Iceland. I see pictures of waterfalls and northern lights there and the news about volcanoes ready to erupt, and it all seems fascinating to me. Music from Bjork or Sigur Ros is quite often in my headphones while working or relaxing at home. TV shows like Trapped give me the shivers (literally) with those cold landscapes and its crime mysteries. But there are not many trees there, I heard. Perhaps it is an interesting place to escape from all this BREXIT nonsense. Have you been in Iceland?
A gallery of pictures taken at Brompton cemetery, in London. I visited this Victorian cemetery a few weeks ago. A cold, cloudy with drizzle day. Very appropriate for the mood of the place. I enjoyed it. A very quite and peaceful place.
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I think I’m going to start a black and white period of pictures. I love colour ones, but I feel like black and white is better suited these days. Black and white is less distracting, helping ease composition issues as pictures can become more abstract and schematic. Also perhaps it fits better with my current mood. Or the British weather, I don’t know…
Over a year ago, I wrote a post where I said that I was doing alright. It’s amazing how things can change so fast. A person that was like my anchor to this place, or so I thought, decided suddenly to search for greener pastures in another (more sunny) country. Also, the company where I was working closed its doors, suddenly too, for unknown reasons. So there I was again, feeling alone, in a place I really didn’t like. A place haunted by memories. After that, I moved to London, I found a job in another studio here, and everything seems to be back on track, almost. London, for all its charm and (photo) opportunities, is proving its fame of being one of the most unfriendly cities of the world. It seems very difficult to connect with people here. That’s what feels to me, so far.
2016 ended (thanks, it was time already…), and for this 2017, I have no idea what to expect. I’m scared of expecting anything. If last year new year’s resolutions were full of plans and ideas for the future, this one will be just about licking my wounds, as they say here. Yeah, I know, it’s a very dramatic way to put it, there are far more serious problems out there, but… Someone I used to know (and love) always said to me that everything happens for a reason. The same person that escaped to the sunny country, ironically. To be honest, I never believed in all that “the universe conspires to make me happy (or unhappy)” nonsense. It is, in my opinion, an irrational way of thinking. And a bit selfish too. An easy way out from (the sometimes hard to deal) reality. I’m sure the universe is busy with more important stuff, like burning helium in stars and throwing dust and gas into black holes. I am a more down to earth person, I guess. I’ll just keep taking pictures, reading, learning new things, doing my job the best I can, travelling with my daughter (my real anchor here, not an imaginary one) to places, etc… and see how it all goes. No plans ahead.
By the way, the picture for this post, completely unrelated to this rambling, was taken two weeks or so ago in London. In black and white looks more interesting to me. The colors for this 2017…
As promised, a gallery with some pictures of Kew Gardens, taken a during my Christmas holidays. A cold, but sunny day, great for a long walk… 🙂
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A picture taken this cold morning, in Kew Gardens. Such a beautiful place. I wanted to visit this place since time ago, but I don’t know why, I couldn’t find a moment. Now, it’s not too far from where I live, in London. I will post a gallery with more pictures, as soon as these Christmas holidays permit…
Sorry, again, for the delay in posting stuff here. I have been posting pictures from time to time in my instagram, and I have yet to edit and postprocess a bunch of pictures from some other places. Maybe not too exotic ones, but with memories (and pictures) that are important to me. Isle of Wight, Cornwall, Weybridge, Brighton, London, my birthplace… all places have been important in my life in the past year.
I took this picture in London with my mobile a few days ago, last Monday. I was waiting for an appointment somewhere close, sipping a coffee in a coffee shop from a famous coffee shops chain in Oxford Street. It should have been an easy thing, but bureaucracy always takes longer than it should. You need this paper, now you don’t… etc. It didn’t help also that I forgot some important document needed… so, I can’t entirely blame them for all. I guess my head that morning was very far from here. At least, it was a sunny morning. 🙂
Its been a while since my last post. Some recent personal events have made almost impossible for me to get time for my blog and keep it updated. Not even editing and processing pictures. I still have loads of pictures from other trips and places that, hopefully soon, will share here. In this “no time for anything” situations is where the convenience of a mobile camera shines. I took these in some places in Spain, Cambridge and London, in the last couple of months.
I wish I could forget the last couple of months… Possibly more material for future posts.
Some pictures I took last Sunday in London. A sunny day, for a change. I went with some friends from Madrid, and they showed me places I hadn’t visit before. I suffer the eternal tourist syndrome, I think…
My two pictures for this weekly photo challenge. The first one taken in Felixstowe and the second in London. Two quite different situations and meaning of letters.
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I took these two in one of those visits to London with my family. Some time ago I said that I like this kind of pictures. You have to position yourself very carefully trying to point your camera exactly to the vanishing point. I find that fun. Perspective correction in post process can help if you miss the exact spot.
I took this ones a couple of years ago. Night time city light are very difficult to photograph. There is an overall orange colour cast, a mix of different light sources, each with it colour temperature, and pictures can look quite weird initially. I tried here to experiment a bit with white balance adjustments and colour curves and this is the result. From that walk in central London is also this other picture, that somehow, I think it has a bit more natural look.
These days it’s been in the news something about how the orange light in a city like Los Angeles has been an important detail for portraying that city in a huge amount of movies along the years. It seems that they want to change the street lights and that will change completely how night-time photography in that city looks. There is an interesting post here about this.
I took these two in one of those visits to London with my family. Some time ago I said that I like this kind of pictures. You have to position yourself very carefully trying to point your camera exactly to the vanishing point. I find that fun. Perspective correction in post process can help if you miss the exact spot.
